The reality is that we're all interested in TV like First Dates

THE pattern is roughly the same each time. My wife is watching something on the screen. Every so often she’ll make the cringing expression as one of the characters does something cringeworthy or an “mm-TsnAWWW” when the heartstrings are tugged.

I’ll crane a neck around and ask “Oh is that First Dates yeah?” in a non-committal voice. I can’t give in too easily.

“Yes it’s really good. Why don’t you watch it?”

“Pah! I don’t be bothered with that oul’ reality stuff.” I try to play ‘hard to get’ when it comes to First Dates so I adopt the persona of a gruff herder just home from bringing the cattle down from their summer grazing to a sheltered valley (rather than a feckless phone-addict constantly checking if anyone has reacted to What I Said On Social Media About The Thing That Just Happened).

First Dates is, unsurprisingly, a reality TV show about people on a first date in a restaurant. In a genre of television which often relies on awful people exploiting other awful people for the titillation of us, the awful viewer, First Dates is a surprisingly non-awful reality show. And even if you are a reluctant viewer, it draws you in.

Once she senses I am within the gravitational field of the screen, my wife fills me in on the back stories.

“Ok he’s sort of shy but he dresses up as a character called Miss Boom-Boom at the weekend and this is her second time on the show because she was stood up and these two are hilarious because she has a phobia about cats and keeps going on about how she hates them and he has two Siamese and he doesn’t know whether to tell her or not. This guy on the date with the red-head lives with his elderly aunt who’s superstitious and won’t let a redhead in the house…”

Once I’m up to speed, I feel free to comment on the performance of all the protagonists. Which of course is the best bit about reality TV: Imagining how much better we’d be in the same position.

I could watch a date between a gender-fluid man and a bi-curious gay woman and say with full authority “Oh, I wouldn’t have asked her that”.

As an interlude between the couples the maître d’ of the restaurant steps in to school us on love. His name is Fred and he’s French.

He’s been called the ‘break-out star’ of the show because of the pithy wisdom he offers but really he is proof that you can say anything in a French accent and sound philosophical.

“Luff is strainshe, you can haff ze good days ans ze bad days” and we all agree and think “Why has no one made that point before?”

And then there are the tears. I get teary in lots of situations but the main ones are when watching a news report about a country having its first election after 40 years of dictatorship, or when there’s An Old Couple on First Dates.

Old Couples on First Dates are the tension-release for the show. While the younger people are staring anywhere but at their date or nipping to the toilet to ring a friend to say “omigod Saundra he’s so weird”, the old couple take us back to a different, bygone era of romantic interaction. Like all those films where Anthony Hopkins would spend decades trying to convey his fondness for a lady by gently adjusting his spectacles on his nose and furiously polishing a spoon.

First Dates is currently filming in Ireland so expect plenty of dates beginning with “Whereja go to school?/Mary Immaculate in Drumfluch/Jaknow Sinead Phelan?/Yeah/I shifted her in the Gaeltacht/I think she’s a doing fairly well for herself now”.

But if they never came here it wouldn’t matter. As Fred the maître di says: “When it kohms to luff, zer are no borderss.”